Partnership Builds Model WiMAX Emergency Network Anchored at Schools
PALO ALTO, Cal. -- Creating a model that uses schools as wireless broadband emergency hubs is the aim of an unusual alliance of a federal institution, local public agencies, business and a Silicon Valley nonprofit. At a meeting here late Tues., the not-for-profit Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) introduced its Emergency Communications & Leadership Information Center (eCLIC) and the Livermore Information Network Collaborative (LINC) that the center helped organize east of Silicon Valley. Other LINC participants are the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the Cal. Office of Emergency Services, the school district and the police and fire departments in Livermore, Cal., and Trapeze Networks.
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The project is “an example to the world” that a wireless IP network can offer emergency responders “point & click” access to “all the communications capabilities available to you,” said eCLIC Chmn. Pat Lanthier, a San Mateo consultant on broadband for economic development. The project has an advisory board of 20 members from all over the world, largely for information-swapping, he said. Members include Washington attorney Henry Rivera, a former FCC commissioner; Prof. Michael Lawo, head of an EU-designated mobility group at Bremen U. in Germany; a Botswana Telecom executive; and Ken Zita, Pacific Telecom Council chmn., Lanthier told us later. He looks forward to working with new emergency communications units at the FCC and the Dept. of Homeland Security, he said.
LINC capitalizes on schools’ historical role as emergency shelters and wireless broadband’s prominence as a magnet for investment and innovation, Lanthier said at the meeting. The project can make use of Cal.’s Operational Area Satellite Information System (OASIS), he said. The effort grew out of the Emergency Response Management Network, a 2- year, $1 million Homeland Security pilot, Lanthier said.
“We're just starting” work leading toward connecting “the cloud” at school sites using WiMAX, said Bill Dunlop of Lawrence Livermore’s National Security Office. The resulting “redundant emergency network” may be open to transportation agencies as well as the participating govt. bodies, he said. Lanthier told us later that one school in the project has Wi- Fi, tied into a state network; it’s being installed at a 2nd campus; and eCLIC is working with the lab on backhaul that probably will be done with WiMAX. He said the district’s 20 schools will be networked within months, before 2008. Each partner is absorbing its own operating costs, Lanthier said, and no other money has been raised.
ECLIC can help create interoperability desperately needed in emergency communications, said Brian Steckler of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey at the meeting. Steckler, who researches “hastily formed networks,” led an emergency communications team in Bay St. Louis, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. Steckler planned to bring up eCLIC and LINC at a meeting he had scheduled Wed. with Jay Cohen, Dept. of Homeland Security undersecy. of science & technology, he said.
Cal. should pioneer in new emergency communications technologies using the analog TV spectrum and IP radios that “cross the voice and data divide,” said WCA Pres. Rick Ellinger. But local participants should work with “Virginia and Washington,” he said, meaning the Pentagon and other federal offices, “for both technical and political reasons.” The military has much experience pertinent to such efforts, Ellinger said.
Wireless networks are needed as the “skeleton” of disaster response, said Palo Alto Mayor Judy Kleinberg, chmn. of the Santa Clara County Emergency Preparedness Council. She hopes eCLIC can show how to involve all the needed players, and achieve the essential but elusive consensus among them, she said.
The technology system -- “hard infrastructure” -- is just part of what’s needed, Lanthier said. Also crucial to success are “soft infrastructure” -- skills, software and sensitivity to “human factors” -- plus “visionary leadership,” he said.